Another Reminder to Gather up All of Your Vital Documents!

[hunter]

17. My grandfather had three different birthdays, which caused some problems when he died.

Documentation must have been a little less important when he was growing up in the Wild West, especially for a white guy.

My grandfather's Army records, his Social Security records, and his California Driver's License all had him born on the same day and month, but different years.

When he was sixteen, as told by his sister, he ran away from his parent's home in the Montana wilderness to the "big city" of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Finding city life dull he decided to join the Army and see the world. Evidently he had trouble with that at first because records of his birth, if they ever existed, were lost. He got affidavits of his birth, birth date, and parentage from the clerk of the county where he was born. The county clerk probably asked around the small town where he was born and people remembered his father as the crazy man who took his family into the wilderness.

My grandfather served four years in the Army and was trained to be a mechanic. He was honorably discharged, married my grandma, and found work as a mine supervisor out in the middle of nowhere taking my grandma with him. They both went prospecting in their free time and my grandma thought it was all a fantastically romantic adventure. She wrote songs about it. Her mother was horrified. No, never, SHE was not going to let HER daughter raise HER grandchildren in the wilderness. So my great grandma bought my grandma a house in Los Angeles and told my grandfather he could live there with my grandma or go to hell. Knowing my great grandma she probably threatened him with guns or poison.

My grandfather decided to live in Los Angeles. That's when he got his California Driver's License, knocking some years off his age. He wasn't able to find any work that satisfied him, especially after the market crash of 1929, and decided to rejoin the Army.

As war was brewing with Germany and Japan the Army trained him as an aircraft mechanic. They put him to work supervising younger men. Eventually they sent him to engineering school. He never told anyone what he did during the war but he was later an engineer for the Apollo Project.

I don't know how my grandfather chose the year of his birth for his Social Security documents. Those put his age between his Army documents and his California Driver's License.

It seems to me a little sad that we must worry about "important papers" so much, especially those of us who are not privileged white men.

When I was a feral young man I traveled all over the Western United States without any ID at all. I'd memorized my driver's license number and the few times I was pulled over I got the cops to accept that. They'd radio in and the number checked out. I had an ATM card too that just had numbers on it, not my name. I don't know if banks will do that any more.

My university ID was important to me too, but only when I was on campus. When I was traveling I left it at home. It was important because it allowed me to check out stuff from the library. During times I wasn't enrolled I had a university library card. I also used the university gyms and showers but nobody every asked me for identification, people knew me and I rented a locker. Sometimes I lived out of that locker and a post office box.

The scary thing now is that fascist Republicans are going to use these "important papers," or the lack of them, to disenfranchise people or worse...